Saturday, January 3, 2009

Black Lake - Nov 8, 2008

The weekend following my trip to Twin Sisters I decided to head to Rocky Mountain National Park for my first taste of winter conditions and give my new winter boots a good test run. With weather getting colder and snow becoming a progressively constant fixture I decided it was time to invest in a good set of winter mountaineer boots. After researching and trying many different styles, weights, etc. I opted for La Sportiva Trengo S EVO GTX, a complicated name for a super lite leather and Gortex combo. I chose these for many reasons, the primary being weight, fit, and hybrid crampon compatibility. Initially I was a little concerned with the warmth that the boots could provide given that these and simalar boots have been reviewed and recommended as 3 season boots whereas double plastics like Scarpa Inverno would fit the bill for winter climbs including technical ice. I have to say I'm quite satisfied with the warmth that these boots provide, in fact I have a hard time thinking of an instance at least in Colorado that these boots wouldn't be sufficiently warm. Unless the plan is sub zero temps for an extended duration... like days, these work fine.


Anyway, Black Lake and winter weather was the plan for this day. I had heard that this is a pretty good hike and gets a little more strenuous towards the end of the approach to the lake. From the image it's obvious that this was a lengthy hike as well. At around 8:00am I set off into the trees and across frozen track and fresh snow. To my surprise I was treading over recent cut tracks which were obviously set earlier this morning. For the most part this was a fairly non-photogenic hike moving in and out of the trees and along a few lake sides.

After about two and a half hours I made my way nearly to the lake and was beginning to work my way above the tree line
when I encountered two sets of other hikers which were responsibly for cutting the trail I had been on. Following some short conversation we parted ways, the two groups going down as continued up, stopped at this point I also felt this was a good opportunity to dawn my gaiters as the snow was now around thigh deep. As I continued on the trees began to give way to an amazing view of clouds coming over the ridge line that I was approaching.

As I approached Black Lake I began to realize why it's named Black Lake, the water appearing nearly black. After resting briefly I was still yearning for more so I decided to continue on ascending up through a gully between a nearly sheer wall on the opposite side of the lake and Half mountain to my East.


Reaching the top of the gully I found a spectacular view of the coming clouds over the distant rugged ridge line. This view had sparked my interest and I later decided to check out what exactly I was looking at and to my complete astonishment this was the Keyboard of the Winds directly south of longs peak and I was generally just West of the Trough on the West side of Longs. Realizing this now I understand just how close I was to the Homestretch on longs and have made a commitment to return to this location to camp and finally ascend Longs via thie trough next spring.
By now I had continued up along the ridge opposite Black Lake as I had approached, considering the time now near 1:30pm and the ominous weather coming from the South I decided to head back, but as true to my nature I needed a little more excitement so I decided to descend the rock wall back to the lake. This turned out to be a length commitment as I carefully chose my line down the modest class 4 face.
Once I reached the bottom of the rock wall the trip once again returned to a trail of endurance as it typically is, remembering that I now am roughly 3 hours from my car. For the most part, the trip back was a snow trudging trip which provided ample opportunity to listen and learn from the environment, an opportunity to become closer to my goals and gain better understanding of myself.

An additional noteworthy point along this trip was on the descent as I approached the lake just South of the Loch Vale trail junction, I ran into a cute young couple... funny I call them young as they must be in their early 20's or so. The guy asked me "Is this it? Is this the lake?" I responded that I wasn't sure of the lake's name but it's the last until Black Lake, unless you're planning on going up there as I pointed up towards the ridge that I had just come down which was now barely visible through the storm that I felt was good reason to head back. The guy assured me no, they were not planning to go any further plus both were quite preoccupied with the difference in our dress, me with boots, gaiters, balaclava, heavy gloves, etc. they with jeans and possibly a leather coat between them. They explained that they were not as prepared to venture further as I was. I agreed proclaiming that the weather "up there" is quite a bit colder than "down here". What I didn't mention was that despite that they realized, or at least I had given them reason to not continue further, in my opinion they were both grossly under prepared for conditions even where they were. By my estimation we were now at least an hour, hour and a half from the trail head and given a situation where the weather changed drastically for the worse, this was more than enough time to create a very serious situation. I'm not an advocate of venturing into the woods unprepared, layers, water, etc. but to me I consider it a general rule that if in easy terrain you don't venture far enough out that you can't return safely in under the time that it takes for the situation to become serious. Now I'm aware that the weather can become serious in a matter of minutes, and by serious I mean white out conditions and severe temperature drop, but the situation doesn't become dire for at least an hour or so in this case as you can still tough it out until you reach safety. In the case of these two hikers, which by my account are still just around an hour and a half from safety (in best conditions) could easily become disoriented or even exhausted trying to make their way back... in less time than it would take to enter hypothermia.
Additional Photos

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

An enjoyable read. The pictures add to the realism of being there on your journey.
Please, continue to share.